Reflections and Structures

You only need get burnt once to learn

Andrei Plesu is a pretty cool guy. He writes nonchalantly, elegantly and sometimes incisively about current affairs, but is fundamentally a man of culture. One story that sprung to mind today while reading about European funding coming to Romania over the next few years was a reflection of his on recent Romanian politicians' names. While old-timer Communist-era politicians had pretty grim names (such as Pacoste, loosely translated as Ill-Fated), we moved on after 1989 to non-descript names the likes of Iliescu and Roman. Sometimes we'd get a finance minister called Ciumara (a word related to the plague) or a prime minister called Vacaroiu (Large Cow, more or less). Examples abound.

Today's story comes from yesterday's Curierul National. It talks about how European funding coming to Romania will have to be used up at a rate of roughly 5.2 million Euros per day. That's OK, I think we should manage if we get the clever people on it but this isn't my point. My point relates to the General Manager of the Ministry for European Integration: it's about his name, to be precise.

The name Gabriel Friptu for this GM is, to me, a wonderful and positive message. It means Gabriel The Burnt One, literally. Now, what does that suggest to you?! A reference to St. Gabriel, whose responsiblities include (is this right?) testing mortals' faith? Or perhaps more simply, this is a model of tomorrow's typical Romanian politician and businessperson: we got burnt. (Expectedly, we'll be more careful next time.)

The question is--how did he get burnt? Because he did something wrong and got caught, or because he tried to do right and they 'burned' him? :-)

posted by Ciprian Man @ Tuesday, April 11, 2006